This new view is the conception, still non-spiritual, of power or powers, everywhere evidently inferred from experiences with the self-activity of objects manifested in movement and life. Gradually the life of objects as manifested in power came to be considered as a thing in itself that could be conceived of as a transfigured form distinctly different from the ordinary, form of the object. This transfigured form was not strictly a spirit but differed from the ordinary form as the body of man differed from the object. It was in short anthropomorphic, it acted as man acted, it embodied the living self-active power of the object. This conception had been made easier by mental note having been made of gross resemblances between the parts of the object and those of the human body.
Next, probably through the phenomena of dreams, ecstasy, hypnotism, intoxication, insanity, death and the like taken with the observation of the shadow of his person and the echo of his voice which were sometimes perceptible and sometimes absent, man was led to conceive of the possibility of a separation of these two forms. The one becomes now purely material; the other spiritual. The self-active element of objects is now for the first time spiritualized. No permanent separation of the two forms, however, is yet thought possible. The spirit may leave its material envelope at will, temporarily, just as it was thought that the soul of man, now for the first time conceived of, could leave the body during sleep but must always return with awaking consciousness. The final step in this line of development is taken when a permanent separation of the two forms of the object is thought possible. The spirits resident in man's body and in every object or power about him are now free either to live in their material object or person or to separate themselves forever from their material form and continue an independent existence. All of these forms of thought are still prevalent among primitive peoples and some of them persist under the influences of the highest type of civilization.
Theories of the nature, form, and later the destiny of spirit naturally followed the conception of it. Religious thought still has much to do with such questions. As one or another theory has held the field the thought of the race has developed into fetishism, totemism, anthropomorphism, metempsychosis, polytheism, or monotheism. Some have believed in the future life; others in nirvana as the ultimate end of spirit. Some have combined various ones of these views in strange proportions. Scarcely any large group of people is wholly free from a number of the crudest of the views here outlined. It is beyond our present purpose to trace the higher lines of thought in detail.
It is impossible to say at just which stage of his thinking man began to attempt an explanation of sickness, disease, and death and to devise means for their treatment. It seems certain, however, that it came with the spiritualization of the objects and powers of the world and the conception of these spirits as capable of action for good or evil, an inference easily drawn from experience. We shall now turn to a closer study of the thought of man along this line, illustrating as fully as space will permit.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
